The ambition for an ethnonationalist “Greater Israel” is being put into practice with devastating consequences. Events in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, within Israel itself and in the U.S. reveal where the world is heading if we don’t stop the wars and retrogression.
The war on Iran and the Venezuela coup are part of Trump’s attempt to reorganize the world order and grasp for absolute power. In countering this tumble toward world war, can we build a movement that is not only against Trump and capitalism, but keeps developing the fullness of what we are for?
Takes up: the situation of people with disabilities in Gaza; the opening of an accessible playground at Ella Baker Global Studies and Humanities Magnet School in Minneapolis; and World Disabilities Day 2025.
The horrendous realities in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Congo, Rio de Janeiro and Venezuela are connected. Several of the world’s powers are implicated. The global capitalist system allows mass murder, rape and genocide to become “normalized.”
Tracing the development of the climate movement—from its focus on environmental issues to divisions over opposing genocide in Gaza—Franklin Dmitryev argues that the climate justice movement inherently reaches for a broader understanding of the roots of the climate crisis and the need for a deep social transformation.
The second annual People’s Conference for Palestine brought 4,500 Palestinian and U.S. student-activists and their allies together in Detroit, focused on the urgent need to stop Israel’s genocide in Palestine and to end the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank.
On Aug. 17, Israelis throughout the country demanded a ceasefire, a deal to free the hostages, the provision of food and aid into Gaza, and not to further invade and occupy Gaza. Throughout the day there was civil disobedience.
Small signs of defiance: Israel’s military Chief of Staff refused to authorize an expanded assault on Gaza. Israel’s Attorney General defied Netanyahu’s anti-democratic orders. 74% of Israelis support an agreement with Hamas that would release all the hostages in exchange for an end to the Gaza war.
Participant report of the Coalition Against Genocide’s protest in Detroit on Aug. 2: “We are determined to stop the Israeli government’s ongoing siege and murder of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.” said the author.
Part I of Franklin Dmitryev’s Organization Report, The Idea of Freedom Strikes Back, given to the Convention of News and Letters Committees on May 31, 2025, takes up the attacks on freedom movements as not just an attack on facts. It is a rush to totalitarian thought control. It is an attempt by the oppressors to project the false idea that resistance is futile, and you are powerless. It is also a confession that radical ideas are dangerous which implies a recognition that the ideas, imagination and philosophy are consequential.
The genocidal undertone of anti-immigrant politics, from the U.S. to Iran and from India to Germany, reinforces the fact that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is not some outlandish exception. In the aftermath of Israel’s war on Iran and Iran’s rulers crackdown on their own people, the question arises: Is Israeli’s genocide in Gaza the signal of where this stage of world capitalism is heading if it is not stopped?
What kind of new world order is Trump heading for? Forced annexation of territories (as in Russia’s war on Ukraine), genocide (as in Israel’s war on Gaza), and neocolonialism (as in the Democratic Republic of Congo) are crucial parts of it. The word “multipolar” cannot hide its imperialist nature.
Why war? To keep the current Israeli government in power. The less democracy, the more power to Netanyahu. But good news: mass protests by Israelis, reserve soldiers not showing up when they receive draft notices, and The Supreme Court holding firm.
Israel ended its ceasefire in Gaza not with words but with the slaughter of over 400 Palestinians. The genocide and struggle for freedom call for our deepest solidarity with Palestinian masses’ efforts at self-activity, without which self-determination is out of reach.
Netanyahu doesn’t want the Gaza ceasefire deal to last, because that might end the war, which would have bad repercussions for him, including having to face his trial on corruption charges. Hamas wants a deal so it can get its VIP prisoners out of jail.
President Donald Trump is encouraging deadly hate toward women, Blacks, people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and immigrants. It is grassroots responses and mutual aid that can block Trump’s power grab. More forms of revolt will erupt in the face of the downward spiral of this capitalist world in crisis.
Farsi translation of the lead article “The U.S. election as manifestation of counterrevolution.”
Counterrevolution is the guiding principle of the Trump campaign and the dominant characteristic of politics worldwide. Although revolution does not appear to be on the horizon in the U.S. or in most other countries, capitalism is stumbling through a global crisis, both economic and ecological, psychological and communal.
Who can stop Israel’s genocide against Palestinians? Israel’s citizens need to confront their own rulers for this cycle of madness to end. Those in the U.S. also bear a heavy responsibility, and must pressure the government to stop arming Israel’s genocide.
On Nov. 7, Israeli soccer fans were attacked in the streets of Amsterdam, bringing harsh memories to the Jewish community. However, news coverage barely touched on the Israelis’ provocations that led up to the attacks.
View of the struggle and rights of people living with disabilities: an art series depicting youth with disabilities in Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal; a seminar for women with disabilities in Tanzania; Disability Pride in the U.S. and Canada; a protest in Brussels against segregation in residential care homes.
Students have poured into protests and encampments because they see a genocide taking place in Palestine. They have shown how intimately their universities are embedded in the military-industrial complex that is arming Israel’s genocidal attack. This movement must be defended, supported and encouraged to develop.
Review of “Gaza Writes Back,” a collection of short stories, the majority written by Palestinian women, in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces 2008, through 2009.
Focus on the real differences in ideas, in News and Letters Committees’ response to the IMHO statement “Our Differences with Other Marxist-Humanists in Light of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.”
In-person report of a visit on May 28 to the Wayne State University students’ encampment in Detroit against Israel’s genocide in Gaza
La guerra de Israel contra las masas en Gaza alcanzó proporciones genocidas. ¿Cuándo podrán los palestinos regresar a los lugares donde vivieron y podrán reconstruir? Su autodeterminación debe comenzar con sus ideas y aspiraciones.
A participant in the 1968 antiwar student occupation at Columbia University draws parallels to students there protesting genocide now. In both cases, administrators lacking reasoned arguments ordered police assaults that failed to quiet protests and spurred actions on campuses across the U.S. and internationally.
Interviews with several students from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., about the protest encampment there against the genocide in Gaza.
Part I of the 2024-2025 Draft Perspectives. Takes up the youth Palestine solidarity movement, as well as the genocide in Gaza, its support from the powers that be and the mass resistance from below.
Part III of the 2024-2025 Draft Perspectives. Takes up Putin’s war on Ukraine and its connection with fascism worldwide, especially seen on Israel’s war on Gaza, the ongoing genocide in Sudan and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s religious chauvinism.
Part IV of the 2024-2025 Draft Perspectives. Takes on the retrogression in Left thought, especially on the questions of Israel’s war on Gaza and Putin’s war on Ukraine.
Israel’s war against the masses in Gaza reached genocidal proportions. When will Palestinians be able to return to the places where they lived, and will they be able to rebuild? Self-determination must begin with their ideas and aspirations.
The “resignations” of presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard revealed the philosophical failings in academia, which is under attack by the far right for not suppressing criticism of Israel. Why didn’t academia know how to respond to the events in Israel/Palestine?
Scientists and climate movements highlighted the urgent need to take real climate action. Opposed are fossil fuel industries and their nation-states, who dominated COP28 and guaranteed its emptiness. The path forward can be built on the movements from below, posing liberation from capitalist exploitation and the release of full human development.
Many thanks to the translator and publisher of the Farsi translation of our “Israel’s war and Hamas attack stoke retrogression”!
جنگ اسراییل و حملهی حماس؛ محرک سیر قهقرایی / فرانکلین دمیتریف / ترجمهی ناصر برین
Luis M. Saenz writing in ‘Trasversales’ argues this is not a war between Israel and Hamas, but a brutal operation by the Netanyahu government against the population of Gaza. Any vision leaving no Palestinians, or no Israelis, in historical Palestine is reactionary. Solidarity with the Palestinian population—which is not solidarity with Hamas—is a duty.
La guerra genocida de Israel sobre Gaza, así como los atroces ataques de Hamás que la provocaron, están llevando al mundo en una dirección reaccionaria y exponiendo la inhumanidad de los poderes dominantes, así como el retroceso de buena parte de la izquierda (Traducción al español del artículo “Israel’s war and Hamas attack stoke retrogression”).
Los ataques del 7 de octubre por parte de Hamás en Israel desencadenaron una nueva fase de guerra y reacción. Israel amenaza con un genocidio con el apoyo de Estados Unidos. La ocupación israelí no justifica la forma en que partes de la izquierda celebraron los ataques de Hamás, que socavan los movimientos de liberación y avivan la reacción. Levantar la bandera de la liberación no debe posponerse, mientras mantenemos nuestra solidaridad con el pueblo palestino y nos oponemos a la guerra genocida de Israel y a las acciones terroristas inhumanas. (Spanish translation of the article “No to Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians, no to Hamas terrorism, yes to social revolution!”)
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and the horrendous Hamas attacks that sparked it, are driving the world in a reactionary direction and exposing the inhumanity of the ruling powers—as well as the retrogression of much of the Left.
Susan Van Gelder reports on two meetings in Michigan supporting both Jewish and Palestinian people affected by the Israel-Hamas war in the West Bank.
The Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel set off a new round of war. Israel is threatening genocide with U.S. support. Israel’s occupation in no way justifies Leftists celebrating the murderous attacks by Hamas, which undermine social liberation movements and stoke reaction. Raising the banner of liberation is critical as we engage in solidarity with Palestinians and oppose Israel’s genocidal war and Hamas’s terrorist actions.
The Israeli military occupation of Jenin is the latest manifestation of the state terrorism the government is carrying out against the Palestinian population. What is new about this repression? How can continued occupation and neo-fascist tendencies in Israel be overcome?
Early this spring, Palestinian-American attorney and activist Huwaida Arraf was invited to speak at Bloomfield Hills Senior High School. The debate among Jewish, Arab and Muslim community members over whether her talk was anti-Semitic and anti-Israel continues to intensify.
More than 25,000 women dressed as handmaids formed human chains in 70 locations across Israel on International Women’s Day, protesting against proposed laws to turn Israel into a theocratic dictatorship.
More than 25,000 women in red cloaks and white bonnets formed human chains in 70 locations across Israel on March 8, combining commemorating International Women’s Day with protests in opposition to the proposed laws to turn Israel into a theocratic dictatorship. Yet Palestinian women’s voices were missing.
Women students protest rape culture at Stanford; feminists in Gaza face backlash for campaigning against family violence against young women; Tunisian feminists protest male-dominated election structure; first woman appointed to Yemen’s Supreme Judicial Council, and women activists there win passport rights.
Women Indigenous leaders in Canada; forced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada; organic farming collective Green Girls in Gaza; dangers of prenatal sex selection.
The brief, dirty war that broke out May 10-21 between the Israeli government and Hamas, the Islamist group ruling Gaza had many reactionary consequences.
Palestinians in Gaza face a double brutality: Israel’s blockade and bombardment, and Hamas’ brutal repression.
A U.S. activist in Syria solidarity criticizes the broad Left’s failure to practice revolutionary solidarity and outlines the dangerous political consequences.
